Perseverance
by michael1812
Summary: Today is an ordinary day. A day like any other. Except it was yesterday, and the day before that, and tomorrow as well. Scorpius is trapped in a time loop, forced to spend his every waking hour dealing with the monotony and idiocy of his reluctant crew mates on Moya as he attempts to solve this mystery. But as time goes on, his sense of purpose wanes. Will he find his escape?
1. Chapter 1

**Day 1**

The crew of Moya did not appreciate the presence of Scorpius, so he kept to himself mostly. Even now he was granted release from his cell, he rarely wandered the corridors of the ship. He preferred the solitude of his room. To think, and organize his mind.

The feeling had started some time ago. It rose, closer and closer into the back of his mind, like a rising sunset, like the squeaky hinge of a common wooden doorframe that is never fixed, but always there. Scorpius meditated to distract himself. Sometimes he slept for so long, he cursed himself. His job was to remain vigilant. To assure Crichton's safety until the time came.

The time would come, Scorpius was sure of that. The future was a certainty, to none but him. The others on Moya did not treat it as such. They moved in uncertainty and fear, wandering aimlessly through the dark. Without purpose. Without clarity. Scorpius sometimes wondered how they could bear it.

Only Sikozu differed from the others in that way. Her purpose, even though she had yet to reveal it to Scorpius, was clear to her. A secret she had yet to divulge.

When they spoke, it was in his cell. They often ate together, played a game together to keep their wits honed and their minds sharp, and they would talk long into the arns of the night. Sikozu would smile and her honesty would shine through the lies. She was young. Beautiful. And naïve.

And a welcome sight for sore eyes. How Scorpius endured his asylum on Moya without her, he did not know.

Scorpius sat upright. There was that feeling again. He breathed in deep and focused on the sounds of Moya, focused on the future that was coming for him, which he had planned for so diligently.

"It is inevitable, Crichton," he said to the human, as he watched him press his brow into a towel. The towel was soaked in sweat. Crichton pretended to be occupied by his workout, as he landed punch after punch into a red plastic bag. His preferred means of communication was to ignore Scorpius altogether, so Scorpius ignored that too, knowing John was listening despite appearances. Subconsciously, John knew the truth, the futility, and inevitability, of what would have to happen. Otherwise, he wouldn't be here, preparing his body for the days to come.

John's shirt was soaked in sweat. His hands bound in cloth. "Every day we have this conversation, Grasshopper, and every day I give you the same answer."

Scorpius knew.

"Go away," John said.

"Some day you won't be able to avoid me, Crichton."

"You're never going to stop trying, aren't you?"

"I'm patient."

 **Day 2**

"Let go!"

Dominar Rygel snapped his teeth at the Nebari's hand. His grip was strong despite his small Hynerian physique, and one would do best to avoid his sharp teeth. They posed a threat to any and all small appendages.

"It's mine!" **  
**  
The pair annoyed each other endlessly, to the point Scorpius started to suspect they were doing it just to occupy the time and keep busy on this long and pointless journey. The trinket they fought over wasn't even worth anything. It was a poor forgery, made by incompetent hands.

Chiana bit back. For all her instability and chaotic mannerisms, Scorpius admired her ruthlessness. She was fierce. Indomitable. On a good day. All the other days, she was a time bomb waiting to happen.

She was also Crichton's best friend. Give or take a Luxan.

When the pair noticed Scorpius' presence, they stopped briefly, until Chiana managed to snatch the trinket from the Hynerian's hands. "There's plenty of worthless stuff in your own quarters! Stay out of mine!"

She eyed Scorpius unfavourably as she left in anger. The Hynerian nursed his bitten brow.

"What'd you want?" Rygel said. "Are you here to gloat? Well, kindly do that someplace else."

"Your wounded pride does not interest me."

"Wounded pride? Ha! This was nothing. We do it to each other all the time. In fact, she's stolen more stuff from me than I've ever taken from her. I might have to do something about that."

"I don't think Chiana will be as merciful next time."

"Next time she won't catch me in the act."

The Hynerian zoomed off in his hovering throne sled, a smug smile etched on his grey face.

The day-to-day antics of the crew of Moya yielded little results. On the Command Carrier he once commanded, the Command deck was always fully staffed. There would be a team maintaining and monitoring every system, and a young ambitious deck officer to report to him with the results. Swift decisions could be made, on a ship that functioned as a smooth well-oiled machine, ready for operations. Of course, this very crew of misfits blew up that well-oiled machine, his very own command. When Scorpius walked into Moya's Command, only D'Argo was there to monitor the daily operations of Moya and its thousands of DRD units. Only one man who took his responsibilities seriously, as captain of Moya.

"Captain D'Argo," Scorpius said, as he stared out the forward portal. "How fares the day?"

D'Argo sighed. "Well," he said, pointing out that same forward portal. "As you can see, there's nothing. And over there, there's more nothing. It's more nothing than we can handle."

"A good day, then."

"A very good day. We haven't died yet. I'll think I'll take a shower."

Scorpius sighed. As he glanced over Moya's operational consoles, he found just as D'Argo had predicted. Everything was running normally. Sufficiently. Apart from some minor glitches in the internal subsystems. A burnt fuse here and there in the neural cluster.

He checked the internal sensors. John was in the gym. Chiana was in her quarters. Aeryn was in the Maintenance Bay patching up her Prowler. Rygel was in the kitchen. The old woman was in the herbology lab, still tinkering with her potions. And Sikozu was sizing up cargo bay 3 for her studies.

"Nothing of interest?" Scorpius asked. "Nothing at all?"

"Pilot says he's scanning some faint movements in the cluster ahead," D'Argo replied. "But it won't matter once we've got Starburst. Pilot says it'll be ready by tomorrow."

 **Day 3**

"Let go!"

"It's mine! Take your hands off it! I stole it fair and square!"

Scorpius could hear the faint muffled struggle and the Hynerian scream in the corridor ahead. Shaking his head, he turned in the other direction. An unnatural chill lingered in the corridors of Moya. There must be a problem with Moya's internal temperature. Scorpius liked it. It was the only positive thing about his day so far. He woke up with a headache, and he'd had the same meals from the same plastic containers for three days now. Once they reached the next outpost, he'd ask Sikozu to bring him something fresh to eat. Something with meat on it. Something he could bake in fire once everyone else was asleep late at night.

Starburst would be ready soon. He'd deal with his physical urges once they became relevant. For now, he'd busy himself with more pressing matters at hand. Because something was wrong.

It wasn't just the chilled air. He could feel it, like static on his skin. None of the crew seemed to have noticed it over the past few days, but something was definitely not right.

He expected the others to have noticed it by now, especially Crichton. Often the Nebari girl would have spontaneous bouts of insight through strange powers, but so far even she has kept quiet. When Scorpius shared his feelings of foreboding with Sikozu, she didn't take them seriously. Her suggested rest seemed to have only made things worse.

His skull was throbbing. He'd checked the coolant rod inside, but it was still glowing bright blue without fail. It wasn't him. The cause of his turmoil had to be external, like he was picking up cosmic interference.

He stopped in every corridor and took in a deep breath. Closing his eyes, he tried to pick up the signal, or scent, of this interference, hoping to find himself closer to the source, where the air was thickest. After three decks, he was starting to feel silly, until a sudden chill ran across his spine.

"Is something the matter?"

The feeling was gone. He was so close. He hadn't even realized he had walked straight into the Maintenance Bay.

Aeryn peered at him from under the disassembled nose of her Prowler. Her ink black hair shone and fell in long straight lines past her shoulders.

"It's cold in here."

Until he could find more tangible evidence for his suspicions, he decided to keep them to himself. He couldn't win the trust of this crew by scaring them with talk of his 'strange feeling'. Embarassing, perhaps, but he cared little for that. He needed proof, mostly to convince himself.

"Is that a problem?" she asked.

Often the others came to his cell, when he was still their prisoner, to gawk or tease at him, or get their petty revenge, but not Aeryn. She wouldn't. She knows what it was like when the roles were reversed. Although she did once come down to visit him. In the first days after the others had arrived. Days they had spent together, from one ship to the other, from a coolant tank to a coolant suit in the coldest part of Moya. Every day he adjusted the settings of her suit and monitored her condition. And then after that, nothing. Not one word. Only frightened looks. Because he knew the truth.

That time when she visited him in his cell, she watched him eat, assessed his threat… and kept her promise. One life for another.

An unspoken arrangement. When it came down to it, she ignored him just as hard as Crichton did, on a daily basis. She was just more practical about it.

"Have you experienced anything unusual lately? Any strange feelings? Strange sounds?"

Aeryn shook her head. "No."

He suspected as much. This wasn't going to be easy.

He spent all day going from tier to tier, searching his feelings for the way to go, but every time he felt like he was moving away, rather than closer toward it. What was he missing?

In long strides he stepped through dark and dank corridors in the bowels of Moya, stepping over DRD's as they whizzed on by. Where the corridors got more cramped, he went on, never stopping. It wasn't long before he found the chamber where Starburst originated. He'd read about them, but never seen it before. The room fascinated him, but also blinded him in an array of green light that bounced off reflective glittering surfaces. It made his head hurt even more. Still, he made a mental note of telling Sikozu about it the next time they spoke.

Peeved, he left the room. The key to his problem wasn't there. He would look elsewhere.

Out the forward portal of Command glowed the cloudy substance of a nearby cluster, thousands of lightyears away. He wondered then, as he did down in the Starburst chamber:

"Why haven't we gone to Starburst yet?"

None of them asked where he'd been all day. None of them cared. They just seemed annoyed to be interrupted by him. John immediately looked away.

"Why do you care?" Chiana said.

"Pilot says Starburst will be available by tomorrow," D'Argo replied.

"Forgive me for asking," Scorpius said. "…but didn't Pilot say the same thing yesterday?"

Calling into question any word or action of the ship's Pilot was tantamount to blasphemy on this ship. They coddle and treat this ship's servant like a child.

"It'll be ready when it's ready," D'Argo added.

One day their incompetence would be the death of them.

As they returned to their daily bickering, Scorpius felt the need to press on. Immediate dangers had to be prioritized.

"What about the ships Pilot scanned in the cluster? Shouldn't we move to avoid them?"

If he were captain, things would be running quite differently around here.

"How do you know about that?" D'Argo said. "I just finished telling the others."

"You told me. Yesterday."

"Uh, no, I did not. Pilot just finished the scan an arn ago."

"He knows something," Chiana said, pointing at Scorpius. "There's Peacekeepers in that cloud, aren't there?"

"Chiana, stop it," Aeryn intervened. "Scorpius. Is there something you want to tell us?"

Anger flashed before Scorpius' eyes, until the realisation dawned. Something's wrong, and this right here was proof that it's wrong. The next step was an obvious one.

"If anyone needs me," Scorpius spoke. "I'll be in my…. cell."

He turned and left Command.

"Don't worry," Chiana added. "We won't."

 **Day 4**

Sleep did not come easy. He wondered whether he should stay awake or let the process unfold undisturbed for this first 'experiment'. Yes, he thought to himself, for now he would have to play along and observe whether events would unfold similarly as before. Next time would be different. If there would be a next time.

Scorpius felt pleased with himself as he awoke. He could feel the same static crawling across his body like ants. He actually felt thrilled to begin his experiment. The endless possibilities excited and terrified him. If he was right, powers were at play that were beyond his comprehension or capability to control. If he was right, he was going to need help.

All possible permutations crossed Scorpius' mind before he even got up from his bed. Then as he left his room he sensed it again, stronger than before. What was it?

He walked down the corridor, a casual apprehensive stride onto the tier, waiting for the sounds to emerge. He waited somewhere close by the intersection between the kitchen and the living areas.

First came the Hynerian, zooming closer on his hovering throne with smug nonchalance, until, very soon after, the Nebari girl came running after him to rip the petty necklace from his paws.

"D'you think I wouldn't notice you stealing my stuff, little dreck? Give it back!"

"Argh! How dare you! That's mine!"

The Hynerian's chair sputtered. He couldn't fight back ánd keep an eye on the controls at the same time. He was a helpless target. He'd been better off trying to speeding off the moment he heard her chase after him, but it's doubtful his chair could even go fast enough to avoid her.

"Take your hands off! I stole it fair and square!"

He snapped his tiny teeth at her, and the Nebari girl responded in kind. Perhaps the only language the Hynerian could truly understand. Primal primitive physicality. Chiana no doubt knew all about that. He screamed and soon the two kleptomaniacs parted ways.

This time Scorpius did not stay to speak to the Dominar. He zoomed off in silence without ever spotting him.

The experiment had been a rousing success. For now, at least, they were all doomed.


	2. Chapter 2

He could hear Crichton's punches out in the corridor. A seething anger informed the human's every blow, a frustration only soothed by the whiff of an unpredictable intoxicant. John was a coward. The human not only ignored his constant warnings, but his feelings for Aeryn as well, befitting his knack for holding grudges, and his obsession with betrayal.

"John…" Scorpius said. "We need to talk."

He approached him cautiously, stepping through the red triangle on the floor that separated them, as if they were being watched. He also didn't know what mood the human was in this day. They might have had this conversation before, but right now Scorpius needed him sober, and sensible.

"I'm kinda in the middle of something here, Scorp."

Perhaps subconsciously, Crichton's punches became more brutal as he aimed for the red bag's lower half. He punched harder and quicker, as he turned his back to the door. No doubt John was imagining punching him. Or throwing him into that awful dumpster.

"Not in the mood for your daily doom peptalk, Mephistopheles."

"Nor I. It's something else with which I require your assistance."

John punched the bag a final time and stopped to catch his breath. He grabbed his towel from the floor and pressed a bottle of water to his lips. Scorpius leaned in close.

"Tell me, what do you remember from yesterday?"

"That's what you want to talk to me about?"

"Indulge me."

John dabbed his forehead with the towel.

"Does it matter?"

John's constant obstinacy was becoming annoying.

"It matters, because… this is not the first time we've had this conversation."

"I wish we had less conver-"

"This EXACT conversation. Yesterday, I entered this room. And the day before that. And you were here."

"Did I give you the finger?"

"You called me Grasshopper."

"I always call you that."

"This is serious, John. I think I am constantly reliving the events of the same day. And it seems I am the only one to hold any memories of it."

John tilted his head a bit, glared at him with his blue eyes, and took another zip of his water bottle.

"You're saying you're in some kind of loop? Some kind of time loop?"

"Yes…"

"You're saying it's you? You? Not me."

John pressed his face into the towel before throwing the towel and the bottle into the corner of the room, nearly hitting a DRD.

"Finally! Someone else gets the wacky adventures for once."

"What are you doing?"

John was taking off his soaked shirt.

"Getting a shower. Don't worry, Scorp. I'll meet you in Command."

"Time is of the essence, John."

"Jup. That's how it works! PILOT!"

 **Day 5**

There it was again. The sounds of a punching bag receiving a beating. Crichton's technique was clumsy, unpolished and angry. Much like his personality.

Scorpius didn't waste any time this time. "John, I need your help."

John kept on punching, circling the red bouncing bag without ever looking up.

"I'm kinda in the middle of…"

"…in the middle of something, yes. I can see that. Still, there are more pressing matters at hand. Moya might be in danger."

He picked the towel off the floor and threw it into the human's face, who promptly caught it.

"What are you talking about, Scorp?"

"Something is wrong with Moya. Time is repeating itself. We, or better put, I, am trapped in a temporal loop with this day repeating itself endlessly. This is the third time we've had this conversation. Take a shower, John, and meet me in Command."

He'd already started the necessary recalibrations of Pilot's sensors before any of the crew had woken up. It displeased Pilot, but there was little he could do to stop him once he'd started tampering.

Scorpius had stayed up all night to observe the transition from one day to the next, or more accurately, the morning of the same day, but to no avail. There was nothing to indicate any change. In any case, the transition was seamless. He would have to pick a different vantage point the following night, if his efforts this day proved as fruitless.

They had spent all day that day coming up with different hypotheses, most of which involved the strange indications of movement in the cluster not far from their position. Any unknown lifeform could be tampering with their experience of time from that hideout in the clouds.

The question remained: why was Scorpius unaffected? How did he retain his memories of the days that followed? A full medical analysis with the limited equipment on board Moya served only to annoy him and waste his time. There was nothing wrong with him.

Scorpius felt the anger rise within him, like a heat wave, until he realized his cooling rod needed to be replaced. He could feel his eyeballs burning. His headache returned with the rising sensation, but he'd learned to ignore pain and focus his senses elsewhere.

D'Argo was surprised to find Scorpius in Command before him. He did not like it.

"Pilot, what is he doing?"

"He has made several alterations to several subsystems in the past few arns…"

"Captain D'Argo," Scorpius spoke, knowing that by addressing the Luxan by his new title would help to gain his favour. "Moya is in danger. I need your permission to change the alignment of Moya's sensor array."

"To do what?"

"Moya's long range sensors aren't sufficient to scan the cluster ahead. Therefore I've made some alterations to the energy banks by increasing the size of the energy burst sufficiently enough to be able to bounce it off the cloud particles. That should allow us to detect the contents of that cloud in more detail. Do you concur?"

Scorpius dug his fingers into the operational consoles, adjusting fluid levels to maintain standard efficiency and bypassing certain life support systems in order to power the array.

"Uh… okay," D'Argo replied.

"Do you concur?"

"… with what?"

"I need Pilot to scan that cluster. Time is a luxury I don't have."

"Is something the matter?" Sikozu entered Command. "I heard shouting. Is something wrong?"

Scorpius felt like offering relief, but he needed D'Argo's authorization to continue his alterations of Moya's subsystems. If they blocked his research he would lose precious time pointlessly arguing and engaging in the same idle speculations he'd had tolerated the day before.

"It's vital that I continue this research. Please."

"What research?"

D'Argo lost his patience. "Crichton! Get up here! Scorpius is doing something!"

"Damnit," a voice crackled over the comms channel. "What's he up to this time?"

Still the human played his game, despite Scorpius' complete candour toward him just moments ago.

"Pilot, engage the long range scanners," Scorpius ordered. "Target that cluster."

"Pilot will do no such thing," D'Argo spoke. "Now what's going on?"

 **Day 6**

"Ladies and gentlemen! It's Groundhog Day!"

Crichton rubbed his hands with glee. Scorpius growled, for he had made that same pointless reference three times and still no-one got it. Yet he tolerated the human's frivolities. John was the only one who seemed to have any practical knowledge of what he was experiencing, either because of the subconscious wormhole knowledge implanted in his brain, or thanks to the amount of science fiction movies he'd been brought up with as a child. The primitive species of humanity were perhaps uncivilized and brutal, but, at least according to John Crichton's memories, they were imaginative. And more intelligent than a first glance would believe. Their adaptability more than made up for their limited sensory capacity.

Crichton would never admit it, but they were more alike than he would like to believe. They were both survivors.

Scorpius snarled again as he was put through the same humiliating medical examination a third time, bearing the same results. "Survivors," he thought to himself, as he endured the scanner. He'd suffered through worse indignities after all.

"Can we now return to the matter at hand, please?"

"Not until we figure out what to do," John replied.

"Sit down." Chiana pushed Scorpius back on to the slab. He showed his teeth in response. It wouldn't be the first time someone tried to bite her that day.

"So what's the plan?" Aeryn asked.

D'Argo was pacing. The others were sitting in a circle of chairs around Scorpius' slab. D'Argo didn't like the idea of being stuck debating something that might as well not be real. There was no proof to any of it.

"Okay, if we'd had this conversation before," Chiana said to Scorpius. "Then tell me… what am I going to say next?"

Scorpius rolled his eyes at the question. "Events have already changed. Different variables, creating different outcomes. I cannot predict what you're going to say because I cannot know what you are thinking."

"You could guess."

"You could leave. This is pointless!"

"Is the almighty Grasshopper already losing his patience?" John asked out loud. "I thought you were the world champion of patience, Scorp!"

Scorpius shrugged, but the words did strike a chord.

"I've already suffered this inanity several times, and no doubt I will have to suffer through it again."

"The only way we're going to get out of this is by working together, Scorpius. You've got to trust us. Rely on us. Come on, man, talk to us. You never stopped talking before. Different variables, remember?"

Scorpius growled. The human was making too much sense, but it was pointless anyway.

"I've already tried recalibrating Moya's scanners to pierce the oncoming cluster, to no avail. There's nothing there to indicate any lifeform intelligent enough to create time distortions. No known species can."

"I was once stung by a black hole," John said. "Skorvians made it."

"Ilanics," D'Argo corrected him. "It was a scientist named Verell. We encountered him three cycles ago…"

Rygel scoffed. "More like crashed into them."

"…he and his Skorvian assistant were working on a special project to turn a black hole into a superweapon."

"You would've liked him," John added.

"But those were side-effects," Aeryn said. "Scorpius, were you exposed to any strange radiation or substances before all this started?"

Scorpius had perfect recall. "No."

"And we haven't been near any black holes…" D'Argo said.

"Moya's afraid of them," Aeryn added.

"What if this is all just in Scorpius' head?" Rygel spoke. "Tomorrow we'll just wake up and everything will be fine, and then we can all conclude Scorpius lost his mind. Hmm?"

"I'd be fine with that," Chiana said.

"We have to listen to Scorpius!" Sikozu spoke. "If he is right about this temporal displacement, we could be trapped here indefinitely. Scorpius is the only one who retains any knowledge of what transpires here. We need to help him. He's the only one that can get us out of this."

"I think Scorp's telling the truth," John said, and the room fell quiet. "Our lives may very well be in your hands."

None of them could actually believe what he was about to say.

"How can we help?"

 **Day 6**

That night, Scorpius stayed up try out a new experiment. He took a piece of fruit from the kitchen and placed it on the floor of his cell. Then he asked Sikozu to stay and watch over him throughout the night. That way, he ensured different variables. The transition from day to day could now not be executed seamlessly, now that Sikozu wasn't in her own quarters asleep in her own bed. This discontinuity had to be accounted for, somehow.

Scorpius watched as Sikozu slowly dozed off. Her head slowly sank into the palm of her hand, her red locks of hair falling down the front of her face. She was beautiful at rest.

He played with the ball of fruit as the night went on, throwing it up and down into the air whenever he liked. Finally, he took a bite. It tasted sour and squishy inside. Moist and stringy. Scorpius spat it back out again.

He remembered the exact spot he'd taken it from. Lately, however, his photographic memory started to fail him. Days started to meld together since they were all so similar. To organize his experiences, he counted every singular encounter with the crew and recalled all the ways in which they differed.

Six days had already passed in this state. How many more would he have to endure?

The solution would present itself soon.

 **Day 52**

Sikozu had faded, just like she had done on every day they tried the same experiment. Every time Scorpius picked that very same ball of fruit, it would reappear in the refrigeration unit again, whole as ever, without bite or blemish, as if it had never been taken out.

This world, where nothing he did made a difference, where nothing he did mattered or made any impact on anything, frightened him. Out there, in the universe beyond the walls of this ship, the Scarran Empire was amassing enough forces to wipe out every Peacekeeper world from existence. From here, there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing that could ever change that outcome.

Here, he was useless.

Some time ago, Scorpius knocked out Aeryn and stole her Prowler to fly as far away from Moya as he possibly could. He hadn't counted on the speed of D'Argo's ancient Luxan ship, so the next day he had to try again. This time, he enlisted Crichton's help.

But the headache persisted, even as Moya shrank into the distance until they could no longer see her with the naked eye. Farther and farther they went, with Moya flying in the opposite direction (and Lo'Laan standing by for when they would eventually run out of fuel).

It was quiet in the Pod. John wouldn't speak much, and even though Scorpius had never much enjoyed flying, he'd always been enamoured by the sight of the vast cosmos surrounding them.

As a boy, all he ever knew was the four walls of his cell, and the loving touch of his 'mother's torture, that shaped him to be the person he was now. He'd always thought that was the universe, the space within those walls, and that he and Tauza the only ones that existed within. He soon found out that wasn't the case, when he managed to hack his cell's systems and discovered he was the unfortunate passenger of a Scarran Dreadnought, and the product of two incompatible races; two of many endlessly diverse races that populated an entire universe. His burning need to learn more fuelled his plans for escape. That, and his desire for revenge.

"Man," Crichton grumbled in the cockpit. "I hate being Andie MacDowell. I do NOT want to be Andie MacDowell."

Crichton's Pod might have been cramped, but to Scorpius, looking out at the stars, it felt like a breath of fresh air.

"Just tell me when we're done so we can head back," John said, yawning, before rubbing his sore eyes. "Fuel's nearly down to zero."

"Almost," Scorpius said. His internal clock was impeccable. "If we are indeed beyond its reach, the transition will not occur. If not, however-"

Not long after he said that, Scorpius found himself waking up in his cell, as if he had never left. It had all seemed like just a dream, only for him to wake up to a terrible reality.

For the first time in his life, Scorpius didn't know what to do.


	3. Chapter 3

Under Tauza's domain, days were strictly organized. She would appear with water and food on precise times, and leave just as punctually, often earlier if her brutal lessons hadn't sunk in as well as she had hoped. Even when she herself was preoccupied, trays of food would appear by his door for him to consume. A daily intake of necessary nutrients, and nothing more.

There was no way to keep track of time within his living space, although Tauza did teach him about the concept of time. That is how he managed to work out his own age, eventually. Twelve cycles he spent under the loving care of his trainer. He had learned to love her in his own way. He remembered the dependency, his need for social contact whenever she entered the room. Tauza had a presence that wasn't easily ignored. Especially not by a child.

There were times that he worshipped her. That's what he hated the most. She tortured him, and he'd loved her for it. Scorpius loathed himself just thinking about it. He swore he would never be put into that position again.

She'd been ruthless to him, lying to him from the very start, since his very birth, all with the singular purpose of creating a weapon; to harness whatever strengths were inherent to the Sebacean DNA and add them to the arsenal of weapons the Scarrans planned to use in their conquest of the galaxy, which they had planned for for so long.

Yet the Scarran Hiërarchy had never counted on it backfiring so gloriously. Scorpius took pride in that. If only he could see the look on Tauza's face when the wormhole weapon would be deployed against the Scarran fleets.

Oh, if only he hadn't killed her and stabbed her eyes out. Shame.

 **Day 99**

"Let go!"

"It's mine! I stole it fair and square!"

They froze when Scorpius walked up to them and didn't stop. He snatched the necklace straight from their hands and looked at it. For a microt there, he was expecting something far more beautiful and worthwhile, but it was just a necklace. One tug and all the fake jewels would clatter to the floor.

He didn't intend to spare any of their feelings.

"This is a fake and worthless piece of junk! Why are you wasting your time…"

Chiana tried to take it from his closed fist, but his reflexes were too quick.

"It's MY worthless piece of junk. Ever thought about that? Now give it back!"

Scorpius released his grip, but flared his fangs at her. He detested her pointlessness, and the fact that she took pride in it. If this was how she was going to spend her time, so be it. She was a hopeless cause.

"I could have sold that," Rygel said.

His rehearsed justifications bored Scorpius.

"To whom?"

"Traders. They wouldn't have known the difference anyway. We could've made a small profit, but she'll hoard any and all trinkets she can get her hands on. She'd even get emotional for a waste disposal hatch. Now, if you don't mind…"

Rygel turned his pompous chin in the other direction and left.

Scorpius felt disgusted.

Their endless monotony started to get on his nerves. Every day, the same agonizing mind-numbing trivialities, on a never-ending loop. Even in his cell, he could not escape from it.

How long had he been doing this? He tried to count the days in his photographic memory, but all he could find was insanity, so he turned away. He never thought there could be anything that could make him feel so helpless.

He never thought there could be anything that could ever break him.

Scorpius felt like he did so many cycles ago; a laboratory rat, some test subject running around a maze for someone's cruel enjoyment. He could feel Tauza's gaze pierce the back of his head even now, beyond death, mocking him, and watching him as he crawled through the dust begging for water.

He already tried to get the attention of anyone that could possibly be out there, in the mysterious cracks of space through which science could not peer. He sent a message on all frequencies. He shouted into thin air, causing the crew to think him crazy. That was thirty days ago, and there had been no response.

 **Day 100**

"Let go!"

He crushed the necklace in his closed fist, reducing it to dust.

 **Day 101**

He threw it out into the corridor, where it shattered, sending pieces all over the floor.

 **Day 102**

He took the necklace and swallowed it whole. Chiana and Rygel had just stood there, staring at him.

 **Day 103**

In the end it didn't matter what he did. He even used his time to test Crichton, to set up elaborate scenarios to gauge his response. Scorpius called it helpful research. He didn't want to admit he was bored.

He'd ask him different questions every day and gauged his responses, but usually it was the same. He had established long ago that there was little he could do to dissuade Crichton; the distrust ran too deep. But there were levels on which they understood each other, and countless ways in which they didn't.

It was pointless. There was no way he could pry open the human's skull and find what was inside. He'd tried that. He had learned to accept that it was not within his power to ever harness the power of the wormholes. He'd learned that the hard way; even when he had taken the knowledge from Crichton's mind and managed to decipher the contents of the chip, he still had no means to understand what it meant. Only Crichton had managed to earn the trust of these so-called Ancients, and only Crichton would know how to use their technology.

His subconscious knowledge had even managed to bring him back to his homeworld. Crichton always blundered his way from epiphany to epiphany, based on blind luck and instinct. It almost offended Scorpius that the human had had a natural talent for wormholes almost injected straight into his DNA. On what grounds had these creatures found him worthy?

And yet his first arrival into this system was via wormhole. Crichton called it an accident, but what if it was skill? Scorpius had had to work his entire life to achieve the same level of research Crichton had simply stumbled upon. This primitive caveman tripped and fell into the greatest discovery known to the universe, and now the lives of all its inhabitants rested in his hands. It was almost cruel.

Scorpius pondered on this on days when he simply stayed in his cell to think and meditate. And often as he closed his eyes, he heard a whispering voice creep on him, telling him it was all for nothing.

As days turned to months, Scorpius' drive to find a solution waned. His purpose, that had once been so clear and true, now seemed alien to him, distant, and unreachable. No longer inevitable. His life had been reduced to…. This. Just this. Just the emptiness.

 _Forever.  
_

 _..._

But he refused to surrender. One day, one like any other day, he wandered the corridors of Moya in search of that static feeling again; the signal he had felt on the first day. It had to mean something. He kept telling himself that that was the key.

He had searched every tier and every room. He'd even donned a space suit and explored every metra of Moya's outer hull by hand. He'd found nothing.

 **Day 104**

He woke up feeling something was wrong.

His insides were burning. Scorpius could feel his stomach convulsing, rejecting something inside, and flexing involuntary muscles in his body. He leaned over the edge of his bed and stuck a gloved finger down his throat. Green stomach acids and bits of last night's dinner rapidly oozed from his body,

Scorpius looked down on the floor. Bile dripped down his lips and chin. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see bits within the bile that didn't belong. He reached an arm down to the floor, and as he moved, he could see a sticky length of string rise up from the liquids. Pressed between his fingertips were the remains of a necklace, and bits of fake jewels scattered in the liquids below his bed.

This changed everything.

Chiana was eager to inspect the goods, even after she was told it had come from Scorpius' stomach.

He was propped up on the slab again in the medbay and Sikozu was prodding and examining him carefully, and gently, moving from head to toes. The equipment was inadequate and ancient compared to the technology used on modern Command Carriers, but they were the only thing they had that could do the job.

"It's a copy," Chiana said, examining the jewels, and holding her necklace side by side. "It has to be."

"If what Scorpius is saying is true," John spoke concerned, "we have a problem."

"IF it's true," D'Argo said.

Something was different this time, because Scorpius changed it, and something about Scorpius made him able to change it. He had dismissed the possibility that the problem had to have been him before. Had he been so sure of himself, so arrogant, that it had blinded him from the solution all along?

The object had survived the transition by being encased inside his stomach. His memories, his awareness, all came from within. There was an element here he was missing. Something that explained his immunity to the temporal disturbance.

In preparation for the next day, Scorpius had the crew of Moya record a message on a datavid. He planned to insert it orally just before the transition occurred to prevent as much corruption of the file as possible. He hoped it would save him from having to answer the same questions over and over.

"Why you?" Chiana asked. "Why not any of us? Why'd it have to be you?"

"We should count ourselves lucky," Sikozu replied. "Without Scorpius, none of us would have been aware of the disturbance. We could have been repeating the same day for thousands of years and never have known."

"How many days has it been?" John dared to ask.

"104," Scorpius spoke.

"But that's…." Aeryn said, and as the scenario played in her mind, the reality of it sank in. "…horrible."

"So we've had this conversation before," D'Argo concluded. "How does this play out, exactly?"

"Do as I say, Ka D'Argo, and we might be able to avoid unnecessary repetition."

Scorpius, however, remembered he had spoken that exact line to the Luxan three times before already.

As they spoke, his mind still raced on for possible explanations. Scorpius knew Scarrans had a biological immunity to certain types of radiation. Perhaps his natural abilities had let him gain the upper hand. Maybe it was a natural phenomenon after all, and they just couldn't see it on sensors. They had to be recalibrated.

But as night fell, there were still no new findings. D'Argo and the others were still working on the sensors without new results, and Sikozu and Scorpius were still in the medbay, using the equipment to analyse the necklace. Without knowing what they were looking for, however, their search always came up empty.

"Maybe," the old woman continued. "Maybe you're looking at it all wrong. Maybe time isn't lineair and there is no loop. There's just this."

Sikozu was baffled by her sudden silence. "What?"

"Hmmm?"

Scorpius had no love for Noranti. Her potions may be impressive to junkies and amateur herbologists, but she was a con-artist. Nothing more. He had once ordered her transfer to his Command Carrier after he had stumbled upon her file on a cargo ship's manifest. She had been arrested for cooking and dealing illegal intoxicants and posing as a healer on plague-infested worlds, claiming she could cure the condition known as the Living Death. Her claims held no truth. High on her own spirits, she believed herself to be some kind of savior until the Peacekeepers managed to beat that delusion out of her. And clean, she was less helpful.

Scorpius growled at the old woman to leave and to take her drugs with her. She seemed offended, and raised her chin up high as she left. Scorpius didn't care.

"It's hard to believe that we're the only two with any semblance of sanity on this ship," he said.

Sikozu smiled, and allowed herself to look away from her research. "Is it true what you told the others? That you have lived through this day a hundred times?"

"104," Scorpius corrected her.

"So many days we can't remember ever having happened," Sikozu continued. "Anything could have happened."

"Infinite possibilities," Scorpius said.

"Were you never tempted?"

He tilted his head slightly. Her questions amused him as she leaned nearer ever so slightly.

"If every day resets to a default state, there are no consequences to your actions. You could do anything, anything at all, and no-one would ever know."

"Are you asking me if I've ever done anything…. immoral?"

"Morality is subjective. I know you have your own distinct personal code you live by, but still…"

Scorpius smiled.

"Do you really want to know all the horrible things I've done?"

Sikozu hesitated now.

"There is much I am capable of," Scorpius said. "But if I told you, you'd simply forget by the end of day."

He sighed.

"If I told you, I would want you to remember. Otherwise, the truth wouldn't matter. It would serve no purpose."

"Must everything have a purpose? Couldn't things just be the way they are?"

"Things are…. For a reason. It is our purpose… to find it."

 **Day 120**

In the shadows of his cell, Scorpius lay on his bed, with his eyes closed. The solitude he spent with his thoughts however, to organize his emotions, was crudely interrupted by a sudden announcement.

It came very unexpected.

"Everyone, prepare for Starburst!"

Scorpius shot upright. This wasn't meant to happen. This was new.

He raced up to Command to find John in leather garb and without a drop of sweat on him. Sikozu stood alongside him, checking all of Moya's systems as they careened through the cracks of the universe. Out the forward portal, they saw what Moya saw; swirls of infinite blue, the Starburst energy that covered Moya's entire superstructure and blinded her from seeing her destination.

Scorpius was at a loss for words. Somehow, the situation had resolved itself. Without him.

Time progressed normally the following days, and the days after that. Scorpius stared at the ceiling of his cell pondering the meaning of his dreadful experience. He felt older. He felt tired.

He felt angry that he hadn't been able to solve it.

And the universe seemed unaffected as well. According to Braca's hidden signals, Grayza was still in hot pursuit. It seemed he had been the only one to suffer the indignity of the temporal loop.

Had it been a personal attack? Why had he been singled out? And why had he been released? And why hadn't the culprit presented itself? Not knowing infuriated Scorpius to no end. To be the plaything of someone else's awful games. He punched a hole in the wall and this time the hole stayed.

 _Had it all been meaningless after all?_

* * *

Finally, the waters of his temporary existence calmed. The assessment had been complete. Scorpius proved a significant influence on Crichton, and often a hostile threat to the knowledge he carried in his mind, but none that Crichton couldn't handle himself. Time would tell if the half-breed would turn out to be a trustworthy ally.

And time did tell. Time always did.

Einstein returned to his side of the wormhole. In time, he would return.

Or maybe he already had.


End file.
